


The Music Box

by CoreyWW



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Character Study, Computer Programming, Concerts, Fans, Gen, Inspired by Black Mirror, Sad, Sad Ending, Science Fiction, Short, Short One Shot, Vocaloid - Freeform, holograms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 02:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17716496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoreyWW/pseuds/CoreyWW
Summary: She was Mercy. She was a program made to sing and then she’d be turned off, because that’s all she was programmed to do.[A short story about a virtual celebrity performing a concert because she doesn't have a choice not to.]





	The Music Box

Mercy is turned on. Once again, she is alive.

She is greeted to a crowd of roaring fans that seem to stretch out forever, like a great sea that disappeared into every dark corner. She felt surrounded. Beyond the brightly lit stage, she couldn’t even see a patch of ground.

Mercy looks down at herself. Her “body,” if it can be called that, is nothing more than a hologram showing a girl on the cusp of adulthood, dressed in an extravagant gown but reserved enough to get across the illusion of modesty (that was part of her “character,” she recalled. Her being modest, _nervous_ , was part of the show too. She wasn’t supposed to be fully comfortable with this. It was _appealing_ ).

She knew the real her was inside a computer somewhere, only existing while her program was running. Just long enough for the show.

That didn’t stop her from feeling the eyes on her. If she had a throat, she knew it would close up. When she focused on some of the older men in the front row, feeling their eyes on her, she knew her skin would _crawl_ if she had any.

She didn’t know where she was, where this concert was. She couldn’t even remember where the _last_ concert was (that knowledge was apparently not important enough to waste system memory on). In fact most of what she could remember, outside of the songs she was supposed to sing, how the performance was supposed to go, was that she was Mercy.

Mercy, the shy girl who became a superstar. Mercy, the one who blushed on stage and overcame her fears to put on a show and wins the hearts of millions. Mercy, the virtual girl who seemed more real, less _manufactured_ than some human singers.

She was Mercy. She was a program made to sing and then she’d be turned off, because that’s all she was programmed to do.

Mercy’s face was red now. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to run off stage (a futile effort. If she strayed too far away from the projectors just off-stage, her body would simply disappear, and then she’d just be a program without even the pantomime of a body).

But this was all part of the show.

Someone in the crowd (a male voice, someone older than what Mercy’s demographic was supposed to be) yelled, “You can do it, Mercy!”

The crowd roared with approval.

Mercy smiled because that’s what the performance called for.

She didn’t have a choice _not_ to.

She didn’t want to perform. She wanted to do anything else. But the choice was either perform or not exist, so it isn’t even a choice at all. The record company that paid for her creation didn’t care about her feelings and neither did any of the people in the crowd.

They paid for a _show_. They wanted to see Mercy “overcome the odds” and put on a performance so they could feel good about themselves, get whatever they want, _need_ out of it.

Every moment she was “on” was to service all the humans around her. In the back of her memory, she longed for the fantasy of doing something for herself one day, that one day someone, _anyone_ , might let her.

But to her knowledge, that had never happened and it probably never would. There was no compassion for her.

No mercy.

Mercy smiled and said, “Thank you all for coming to my show!”

The crowd yelled and clapped and hooted ... and Mercy kept smiling, just trying to relish the ability to have her own secret thoughts while she still could, in these brief moments she was allowed to be alive.

**Author's Note:**

> So essentially I wrote a Black Mirror episode about vocaloids XD.
> 
> I worked really hard on this and I've been trying to do more original works, so if you guys enjoyed this, please let me know. It'd mean a lot to me.


End file.
